During his visits to Chartley Castle, Sidney became more and more in love with the little Penelope; but when he declared his passion, she held him off, like the coquette that she was, while she took pains to spin the web of her fascination more hopelessly about him.
The earl, her father, was always in favor of a marriage between the two; and at his death, which took place in Penelope's fourteenth year, he said of Sidney:—
Sir Philip Sidney and Penelope Devereux
"Oh, that good gentleman! have me commended unto him. And tell him I send him nothing, but I wish him well,—so well that if God do move their hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I call him son—he is so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous and worthy a gentleman as ever England bred."
Two years after Essex's death, his widow was secretly married to Sidney's uncle, the Earl of Leicester. This made a sad change in Philip Sidney's fortunes. As long as Leicester was unmarried and childless, Philip Sidney, as his natural heir, was a man of great prospects and a very desirable match; but Leicester, married, with the probability of children to inherit his titles and wealth, left Sidney only a poor commoner.
With Sidney's prospects ruined by her own marriage, Penelope's mother decided that her daughter should make a more ambitious match, and betrothed her to the powerful and cruel Lord Rich. Too late, the little maid realized the value of the love with which she had been playing. When she could no longer look forward to a match with the noble young Sidney, she waked to the knowledge that her whole heart was bound up in him; and she protested, even at the altar, against the marriage into which her mother was forcing her. "Being in the power of her friends," as the Earl of Devonshire afterwards wrote concerning her, "she was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after."
His love for Penelope was the supreme passion of Sidney's life. His was a heart too true to change. And as Orpheus gave to his harp his love for the lost Eurydice and charmed all nature into silence, so Philip Sidney, bereft of the woman he loved, poured out his soul in poems that still touch every loving heart.
From politician and courtier, Sidney rose to be one of the most distinguished poets of his day. He wrote many poems which are still considered of high order, but his "Astrophel and Stella," which contains the story of his love for the Lady Penelope, is his most popular work.
Though possessed of all the grace and elegance of an Elizabethan courtier, as well as of a gentle and artistic temperament, Philip Sidney was no weakling. Under the costly trappings of his court finery beat a heart as bold and passionate as King Richard's own.